Most carbon credits certified in India are “questionable” and do not represent real greenhouse gas reductions, according to a Wikileaks cable.
An American diplomatic cable from July 2008, described in the Daily Telegraph, quoted a senior Indian carbon credit assessor as saying that no Indian projects meet international standards for carbon credits. R K Sethi, head of India's Clean Development Mechanism Authority, said the agency simply took project developers at their word when approving applications for carbon credits, and he called for rules to be loosened.
India is the world's second largest source of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs).
Eva Filzmoser of CDM Watch said she was concerned that 33 coal power plants were among 1700 carbon credit project bids in India. Four of the coal-fired stations have been approved so far, out of a total 700 approved projects.
In other carbon finance news, a cooperative of trucking companies and heavy equipment operators in British Columbia is capitalizing on reductions in fuel use by selling carbon offsets to the Pacific Carbon Trust, the Vancouver Sun reports.
The 23 companies, calling themselves the Carbon Offset Aggregation Co-operative of B.C., signed a five-year deal with the trust. The credits have a value of $12 to $13 per ton of carbon.
The companies burn 50 million litres of diesel in their equipment each year, and chair MaryAnn Arcand said members can cut consumption by 10 to 20 per cent. They plan to reduce fuel use through technical and mechanical changes to equipment as well as operator awareness. With new control systems, companies won’t have to keep heavy equipment operating all night – a common practice during the cold Canadian winters.
And Arcand said the program could even lead to a new kind of eco-label, with big home improvement stores expressing interest in green-certifying participant loggers.